


All of This Has Happened Before

by stealthofdays



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie, Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Gen, the Goddess - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 04:24:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17573819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stealthofdays/pseuds/stealthofdays
Summary: The Goddess goes through the portal; wherever she goes, there she is.





	All of This Has Happened Before

If time could be said to pass in a world that did not yet exist, She supposed a great deal of it went by before She got the hang of Creation. Well, She said to Herself as She looked out over the starry void, I suppose this will do.

She remembered what had been said about moving forward. There would be no God of All Creation and there would be no children (no heartbreak, no rebellion). It did get lonely, though. Eventually, She caved and made woman in Her own image.

It helped, a little. She'd grown to know humans back in another life; She even remembered a little what it had been like to be one. One thing she'd forgotten: the way they had into sucking you into their drama. Before you knew it, you were holding your figurative breath as two puny tribes battled it out, completely ignoring the truly spectacular birth of a unique galaxy somewhere in the background.

It still wasn't enough. One day, She yielded: to heartbreak, to nostalgia. To temptation. The child lying on the richly draped bed was, of course, not the first child to die in Her new world. Maybe it was something about the slant of her cheekbones, maybe the way the light touched the cropped curls. Once, there had been… a daughter? A child. Something here pulled at Her and She could not, did not want to resist. Without thinking, She stepped forward.

It wasn't the way it had been that first time, so long ago now. The deepest secret of true Creation is knowing how to draw in that infinite light-filled breath and hold it, for as long as you wanted there to be a world. When the Word started feeling confined by the flesh, there was a much easier way to expand. No explosions necessary when you could just… add more flesh. A thousand bodies, ten thousand bodies. She'd only realized too late that it didn't do to get complacent.

This, She thought, was something like what her ex-husband must have felt. Before they were children, the angels had been nothing but expressions of His will. But when you are infinite, you get all the different parts of you having all kinds of different thoughts all across the universe. It can be hard to keep track, but if you don't, all your little sparks of divinity develop minds and wills of their own. Until the day comes when one of them flat-out refuses you. What do you do when you own hand flies up and slaps you in the face? Amputation really didn't sound unreasonable, when put like that.

And so the day came when the Goddess stood face-to-face with a self bent on Her destruction. Part of her had latched on to the need for survival, for continuous expansion. The other still pined for her old friendships, for connection that was never enough. It was that part that – for a brief moment - watched the Justice of Toren bloom, starlike, and fall, with hideous ruin and combustion, down.

It was also She who now stood in the hidden room in Omaugh Palace. The surviving piece of the ship – which had just tried to shoot Her, again – lay in the station's sick bay. She sighed. That old homesickness, the heartbreak she'd almost thought she'd banished welled up again. Breq, the tool that grew a mind of its own. A tall, gawky figure with a love of music, lost causes, and absurd justice. The rising tide of misery within Her lifted on its swell the memories She'd long jettisoned: Her other daughter, the one she'd not-so-secretly loved most. The one with all the songs – though her love of music, the Goddess recalled dimly, had been somewhat better reciprocated than Breq's.

This wasn't her, of course. _She_ would never be back.

Somewhere out there, a part of Herself She no longer knew was scrambling desperately for survival, willing to power infinite expansion with infinite destruction. She lingered, contemplating the still figure in the bed.

She would never see them again, all her daughters She had left behind.

But, for some time, she could have something like a child again. An angry, rebellious daughter, who, for some reason, cared deeply about humans and their freedom.

Breq would not be happy when she woke up. She would, of course, grudgingly acknowledge the practical reasons behind the adjustment to her identity.

The figure on the bed stirred and the medic came in.

"Rise and shine, Breq Mianaai," the Goddess murmured. "Rise and shine."

The other reasons… Breq wouldn't understand, of course, but a parent just wants what's best for their child.


End file.
